


my lover is a serial killer

by astralitte



Category: Persona 5
Genre: Alternate Universe, Implied Cannibalism, M/M, Mild Gore, no beta we burn like goro on 10/25
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-04
Updated: 2020-08-04
Packaged: 2021-03-05 19:42:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,456
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25700785
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/astralitte/pseuds/astralitte
Summary: The entirety of the crime scene had felt that way, from the way that the killer had placed the victim—a girl with blonde hair and bright blue eyes—lying elegantly in a bed full of roses to the way the killer had delicately spread her skin such that it exposed her missing ribcage and put her once-beating heart on display.“Blatant courtship indeed,” Akira repeats to himself.
Relationships: Akechi Goro/Amamiya Ren, Akechi Goro/Kurusu Akira, Akechi Goro/Persona 5 Protagonist
Comments: 30
Kudos: 159





	my lover is a serial killer

**Author's Note:**

> This thought struck me in the shower, but Gege is also to blame because I talked her into watching Hannibal and she's been talking to me about it, which is to say that I really only have myself to blame.

When Akira visits the journalist's website to see what that crass Mishima has posted, he isn’t surprised to find pictures of the latest crime scene stamped all over its front page. He clicks on the link, which sends him to the article about Crow’s latest victim, and scoffs at the rubbish that he reads.

Somewhere in the second half of the article, there’s a paragraph that includes the journalist’s suspicions about Akira being Crow’s accomplice.

“Seriously?” Akira scowls. He ignores the rest of the written article and scrolls back up to glance at the pictures again. They are far too gory for the public’s eye, yet too exquisite for them to be called something as boorish as photographs of a murder.

At that thought, Akira squeezes his eyes shut and forces himself to scroll down to the end of the page. He pretends that he cannot see the images behind his eyes, pretends that he wasn’t at the crime scene just earlier today, walking through the blood-splattered room to calculate and decipher how exactly Crow could have done it.

Akira opens his eyes again.

The first comment that he catches sight of makes him laugh. Whoever Alibaba is, he agrees with them that what Crow has been doing seems like blatant courtship.

The entirety of the crime scene had felt that way, from the way that the killer had placed the victim—a girl with blonde hair and bright blue eyes—lying elegantly in a bed full of roses to the way the killer had delicately spread her skin such that it exposed her missing ribcage and put her once-beating heart on display.

“Blatant courtship indeed,” Akira repeats to himself. He copies the URL of the website and fires it to his boss with a ‘ _someone needs to tell Mishima to fuck off already_ ’.

Sighing, Akira slams his laptop shut.

x

It is six in the evening when Goro raps on the door to Akira’s apartment, a pleasant smile on his face. He waits patiently as his lover opens the door, greedily swallowing the sight of Akira’s dishevelled hair. He makes a mental note to create his own disorder in that chaos later, a way to further imprint himself.

Dinner will have to come first.

“Hello, darling,” Goro says, once the door shuts. He takes a step forward and crowds Akira against the wall to steal a brief open-mouthed kiss while Akira is still stunned.

“What are you doing here?” Akira asks, though he seems delighted.

Goro walks himself to the kitchen and unwraps the bag of seasoned ribs that he has brought. “Why, to cook for you, of course.”

x

When Akira goes down to the lab to see what the other investigators have found on the body, he finds Ryuji poring over evidence from the crime scene. It’s clear from his ruffled hair and the bags under his eyes that he has barely slept, but Akira doesn’t blame him. Everyone on the team rarely sleeps whenever there is a fresh body.

Akira places the coffee that his best friend asked for on the table and gives Ryuji a light pat on the back. “Hey, man,” he says, looking over Ryuji’s shoulder. “Found anything?”

“Nah, bro,” Ryuji answers without looking up. He reaches blindly for the coffee, then chugs it all in one go.

“You wanna talk?” Akira asks instead.

Ryuji finally looks at Akira, but he shakes his head and offers a small smile. “I’m good,” he says. “You?”

Akira shrugs, unsure what to say. He cannot fathom how to begin expressing his feelings about a serial killer who is besotted enough with him that they would go through the trouble of killing people who looked exactly like those who mattered in his life, just to send him a message.

“I mean,” Akira says. “What is Crow even trying to tell us?”

“You,” Ryuji corrects, staring into his empty cup. “You mean what is Crow even trying to tell you.”

In response, Akira lets out a drawn-out sigh and presses the balls of his hands into his eyes.

x

Goro fancies himself a hero. He is no fool though; he also knows that the law and the public do not agree that he is one. He supposes that it doesn’t matter. None of his victims have been intended for them anyway.

What he does want them to know, however, is that each one is painstakingly selected from the crowds of Shibuya. He knows to pick the ones who are lonely and desolate and knows the tell-tale signs of a person who will not be missed. These are simple tasks to those who live in Tokyo, he thinks, where people suffer loudly in their oppressed silence.

But, of course, there are rules—because there are always rules—to what his victims must look like.

There cannot be uncertainty so that Akira will one day get the message.

Because what Goro only wants is for his lover to realise that they are always rich when it comes to love, that there is no need for his lover to be a slave to society, and that all his lover needs is Goro himself. These are all but elementary. If only Akira could see that, then Goro can easily help him to fulfil the highest tier in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs: self-actualisation.

But until then, the message has to be repeated and repeated. And until then, Goro will take comfort in the strange sense of delight that runs down his spine as he hunts his victims through the night. It is only unfortunate for them that they just happen to catch Goro’s eye.

The media calls him Crow after all, and crows have always been opportunistic hunters.

x

Crow is an enigma, so much so that Akira has taken to dreaming of this faceless serial killer every night.

In his dreams, Crow comes like a ghost, there but not. They always stand there with a jagged smile and a bleeding heart. They always whisper lines like ‘I love you’ and ‘find me, darling’ and ‘tick tock, your hands are just as red as mine’.

Whenever he tries to touch Crow, they disappear. Flighty. Skittish. Whenever he leaves Crow alone, they watch, head snapping from side to side. Observing. Waiting. Akira wonders if the behaviours are because it is how he imagines Crow to be or if the media had influenced his perception by calling this murderer ‘Crow’.

_It’s an awfully plain name,_ Akira allows himself to think, only when he’s in the dark recesses of his mind, _for someone as brilliant and dazzling as this murderer._

Sometimes—just sometimes—if the dreams are kind to him and he listens closely enough, the killer’s voice sounds a lot like Goro’s. It is a thought that has occurred to him many times by now. The only lookalike that Crow hasn’t killed is Akechi Goro himself.

It makes no sense. It makes a lot of sense.

Still, only in these dreams, where no one else is watching, Akira stares back at Crow and _wants_.

x

Difficult describes a situation in which one cautiously tries to balance their phone between their shoulder and ear while ensuring that the lifeless body has been strung up securely.

One way or another, Goro manages.

“No, darling.” His sigh is put-upon, but the breath of air that he releases cramps his shoulder. He winces and switches his phone to the other side with just his thumb and index finger. “No, I can’t. Not right now. Perhaps in an hour.”

He glances at the clock in his latest victim’s apartment, a lady who looks like Akira’s terrifying psychologist, Haru, down to the very auburn pink hair.

On the other side of the line, Akira whines like a neglected child. It’s a whim that Goro likes to give in to most of the time. It feels indulgent in a way, playing the attentive boyfriend who caters to his lover’s every need.

But something is off about tonight, and he can feel it in the air. He knows that a knife-sharp killer is useless without any survival instincts.

“Darling,” Goro says, watching the blood ooze and drip. “Behave. I’ll see you in an hour.”

He hangs up the phone.

x

Because Goro had ended the call the way that he did, Akira now knows it in his blood: Goro is Crow. Crow is Goro.

No matter how he twists the fact in his head, it isn’t something that he can escape from.

He has one hour to decide the outcome of this story, though he has realised by now that there is only one thing that Crow—no, Goro—wants from him. It must be love. It has to be. It’s the only explanation for the montage of victims flaunting their hearts.

Well, whatever fucked up concept of love that a psychopath can imagine anyway.

The microwave screams for Akira’s attention, so he pulls open the door and takes out his reheated tea. His first thought is to remember to finish it before Goro arrives; his boyfriend has never stood for such a disgusting habit, but Akira cannot help getting his head stuck in the clouds and letting his tea freeze.

Sipping his burnt genmaicha, he feels his heart clenching. How many of Crow’s victims had he unsuspectingly tasted?

_Tick tock,_ he remembers from his dreams, _your hands are just as red as mine._

He both hates and loves that his heart surges and doesn’t stop.

x

When Goro arrives outside Akira’s apartment, he is chuffed to find that there are no obvious signs of officials waiting for his arrival. Then again, Akira has never disappointed him.

At the lobby, he languidly checks himself in the mirror. There are no blood stains, not even a speck, for he has always prided himself for being careful. He double-checks the hidden but easily accessible compartment of his coat for his knife, patting it to make sure that it is secured.

Akira is on his side, or some semblance of it. Of this, Goro is sure by now, but there might still be back up in Akira’s apartment and one can never be too careful.

Goro climbs the stairs to the fifth floor to run through the scenarios in his head.

In one of them, Akira bleeds his life away in Goro’s hands, his eyes hurting with betrayal. He reaches up to caress Goro’s face, smearing red across Goro’s cheeks. In another, perhaps a week later, Akira is stood next to him as they hold a knife together, sinking it into their victim’s flesh. Bloodlust burns in Akira’s eyes from their first kill together, a giddy laugh spilling from his lips.

They are both scenarios that Goro cannot find the heart to say no to.

x

“Goro,” Akira says, aware of how cordial his voice sounds. He is unable to help it, not when he knows that this is a turning point in his life.

“Akira,” Goro says, his voice unaffected. He is wearing that usual complacent smile of his.

Akira doesn’t miss how Goro does a quick, deliberate scan of his apartment. He doesn’t blame Goro in the slightest. There is a life, or two, at stake tonight. Akira hopes that they will both tumble out on the other side unscathed.

“Mishima thinks that I am your accomplice,” Akira begins. He grimaces at how it comes out. It almost sounds as crude as the way Mishima writes.

“That lousy journalist?” Goro laughs, short and jovial. “Darling, please.”

“Please what?” Akira suddenly snaps. He doesn’t turn around as he leads Goro to his bedroom. His instinct tells him that it is foolish to leave his back open to a murderer, but he pushes the thought aside and rationalises that if Goro had wanted to kill him, well, Goro could have done it a long time ago.

Goro walks past Akira and plops down on the bed. He makes a display of lounging there, grinning invitingly. He pats the bed. “Come here, darling,” he says.

Akira does not. There is no reason to. Not yet anyway. Instead, he stands in front of Goro with his arms folded, aggravating his bottom lip by chewing and chewing. For a brief moment, he feels like he is in one of his dreams when Goro stares back at him. Observing. Waiting.

Perhaps the media was right to call Goro ‘Crow’ after all.

x

They talk. Or rather, they fight.

By the time it is over, they have somehow ended up in the living room.

While Goro is still half-dressed, Akira is missing all of his clothes. There is a cut on Akira’s arm where he accidentally nicked himself on the knife that he extracted from Goro’s coat. There is a flowering bruise on Goro’s cheek where Akira elbowed him on purpose. There are bite marks littered across both their necks and shoulders.

Goro has never felt more alive.

They agree on the most important thing—they want to stay together, though there are complications that they have to work out. The first one being the dead giveaway of who Crow actually is.

As Akira lectures Goro on how he needs to better cover his tracks, Goro feels a primal need stir in the pit of his stomach. He ignores it and makes himself focus. The more Akira talks, the more Goro starts to realise that his only weakness and, hence, his biggest blind spot as a serial killer is Akira.

The obvious choice to fixing this problem will be to kill Akira and preserve him, Goro feels, but that defeats the purpose. He wants to bask in Akira’s presence so much that it physically hurts.

His eyes slide over to the knife in the corner of the living room and his fingers twitch in impatience. At that, Akira snatches him by the chin and sneers.

What an alluring sight.

“Once the attention is off the both of us,” Akira articulates, “you’ll have to stop.”

Goro steels his gaze on his lover. This is a scenario that he hasn’t imagined. He nods slowly anyway, just the once. Let Akira thinks what he needs to. It won’t be the first time that Goro has lied to him. It won’t be the last time that Akira will have to find out the truth.

Leaning forward and capturing Akira’s lips in his, Goro cannot help but smile at the thought of the many meals that he will be cooking for Akira in their future.

Goro will be okay with this plan for now, playing the generous, tolerant boyfriend.

Besides, he has the rest of their lives ahead to change Akira’s mind, and there is only one way to sate his palate.


End file.
